RE: No to SQL? Anti-database movement gains steam

From: "Goulet, Richard" <Richard.Goulet@xxxxxxxxxxx>

To: <sunil.kanderi@xxxxxxxxx>, <Oracle-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Date: Thu, 2 Jul 2009 16:00:57 -0400

Well, well, this dark horse has risen yet again. There were many
similar items like this over the years. B-tree libraries that allowed
one to imbed a database into any application. HP Turbo-Image that did a
super b-tree setup. Worked very fast, but was a pain in that
uncommitted data was visible every where immediately, row locking made
it a real problem for anyone else, reliability was an issue as well, and
don't even talk about changing the database structure as that took a lot
of downtime.
The ideas that they presented & yes I've been listening to the
presentation they made are OLD HAT and simply the desires of a web/java
developer to want to control their own destiny. Problem is that once
that person dies, gets layed off, or even fired your stuck with a
non-compliant application and database that no one understands or knows
how to maintain. I guess some would call it job justification, by
subversive action in my mind. Then, of course comes the idea of data
sharing. These apps will not be able to do so without bridging software
that surely isn't going to be available without the original creator.
OH, yes, there is always the problem of when one of those "commodity"
servers decides to crash and burn. If you believe that the guy/gal who
built this nightmare is going to fix it your severely mistaken. It's
wonderful how they can come up with justification for what they want to
do until it goes production and all hell breaks loose at which time they
know nothing about it.
I'm also rather puzzled by their comparison between their nosql
alternatives and MySql's write capability. If you look on MySql's web
site they plainly tell you that their not the worlds fastest database at
writes, only reads. Kinda like comparing the abilities of a car and a
motorcycle to back up a hill.
Short answer, we've all been there, done that before and are still
smarting from the end results. It's simply a matter of people who want
to forget history and repeat the mistakes of the past.
Dick Goulet
Senior Oracle DBA
PAREXEL International
________________________________
From: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Sunil Kanderi
Sent: Thursday, July 02, 2009 2:47 PM
To: Oracle-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: No to SQL? Anti-database movement gains steam
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&amp;
articleId=9135086
Interesting article in ComputerWorld about the NoSQL movement. Most of
my DBA experience has been primarily related to large ERP applications
and recently had to start supporting Java Development environment and it
almost feels like a totally different world. Looking at ORM tools like
Hibernate, which is very popular with Java crowd, it baffles me as to
how little SQL one really needs to know to get by with and their general
aversion to understanding SQL. At this point these NoSQL alternatives do
not seem to apply to the enterprises, but mostly to Web 2.0 based
applications. However things could change and was curious to know what
the broader Oracle community thinks about these alternatives especially
with Cloud computing and databases on the cloud, fast catching on within
the enterprises. At my work place, we are migrating all out
hardware/database infrastructure to a hosted platform and I wouldn't be
surprised if within the next three years all our applications being
totally supported on a cloud platform. This will undoubtedly have a big
impact on the infrastructure folks, be it OS/hardware or Database.
Here is a good discussion on the article sited above.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=683807
Best,
Sunil.
http://www.linkedin.com/in/sunilkanderi